Ten renewable energy trends to watch in 2021
Ten renewable energy trends to watch in 2021
Even
after Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on almost everything else, the New Year begins
with surging growth for renewable energy. “2020 was the year of positive
surprises for the environment in a way that very few saw coming,” says Jeff
McDermott, head of Nomura Green tech. “It was the breakout year in
sustainability and infrastructure.”
Growth
will likely continue into 2021, fueled in part by last year’s major turning
points. China has now committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2060, putting
the world’s biggest market for solar and wind power on the path to ramp up
installations as it begins its next five-year plan. Some analysts have started
predicting that the U.S. power sector is approaching peak natural gas. That
would leave room for solar-panel installations to build on the ongoing boom.
To
understand what’s driving the renewable expansion—as well as what might hold it
back—we’ve put together a guide to the biggest recent developments and the
major forces shaping the global renewable market in 2021.
America’s solar broke good and bad records—in the same year
Residential
installations in the U.S. dropped nearly 20% in the second quarter of 2020 from
the first—the most ever—as the pandemic prompted stay-at-home orders, according
to Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association. By the end of
the year, however, the sector bounced back and the country added 19 giga watts
of total solar power, based on projections in December from Wood Mackenzie and
SEIA. That would be slightly more power than existed in the entire nation of
Colombia at the end of 2019, according to Bloomberg NEF.
Installations doubled in China
Even
after the government locked down large swathes of the country early in the
year, businesses still wanted solar. The country’s main solar industry group
expects a record surge in business over the next five years following President
Xi Jinping’s September announcement that the country will zero out carbon
emissions by 2060.
A battery boom in the U.S.
New
battery-storage capacity in the U.S. more than doubled in the third quarter of
2020 from the second, according to Wood Mackenzie and the U.S. Energy Storage
Association. Projects in California were a key reason for the surge.
Spain emerges as solar powerhouse
Electricity
from solar farms in the country with Europe’s greatest solar potential was up
over 60% in 2020 compared to 2019, generating over 15,000 giga watt hours of
power, according to data from the country's grid manager Red Electrica. While
the sunny Southern European country still has about a third of the installed
solar capacity as the EU’s leader Germany, Spain’s sector is set to grow at
about double the Germans’ pace in the next two years, according to Bloomberg NEF.
Renewables top fossil fuels in European energy
During
the height of the pandemic, when overall power demand sank, renewable power's
share of the grid surged in Europe. About 40% of the electricity in the first
half of 2020 in the European Union came from renewable sources, compared with
34% from plants burning fossil fuels, according to environmental group Ember.
U.K. goes coal-free for more than two months
A
67-day period became Britain’s longest stretch without coal since the
Industrial Revolution and helped make 2020 the country’s greenest year yet for
its power grid. Britain is going to completely phase out the polluting fuel by
2025 as a growing share of its power comes from wind farms. Prime Minister
Boris Johnson also vowed to ban new gas-power cars by 2030 and spend $1 billion
this decade to capture carbon emissions from at least two industrial hubs.
Solar installations dropped in India—by a lot
India's
debt-burdened utilities were further battered by the world’s largest lockdown
in 2020, leading to a 72% drop in solar installations and the slowest addition
of wind power in more than a decade. On the plus side, though, bids to develop
new solar projects continued to set new records—meaning that once power company
finances are in order, it’s a good bet that solar will be the cheapest option.
Another bit of good news was that clearer skies when factories and streets were
empty meant that there wasn't as much smog blocking the sunshine, allowing for
higher generation from the country's existing panels.
Australia’s grid is overwhelmed
High
power prices and abundant sunshine have spurred a love affair with rooftop
solar, with about 29% of households now outfitted with panels. That's wreaking
havoc on power utilities with daytime demand for electricity from the grid
falling to record lows in three states in 2020, leaving expensive power plants
running well below capacity.
Solar-panel makers face rising prices
An
explosion and a flood shut down two Chinese factories that produce polysilicon,
a crucial material for photovoltaic cells, sending prices up 75% in less than
two months. Solar glass prices also soared as increased use of two-sided, or
bifacial, panels boosted demand, while capacity was constrained by limits on
heavily polluting glass factories in China. Rising costs have so far not
affected sales, but they have rippled through the solar supply chain, with
module prices experiencing the first quarterly rise since 2015. That could be
bad news for project developers who bid low prices assuming equipment costs
would continue to follow their long historic decline.
A new climate-change risk
While
electricity shutoffs prompted by wildfire risk has contributed to mounting U.S.
homeowner interest in rooftop systems and batteries, Northern Californians in
September learned a cruel irony: smoke from a large blaze blotted out the
sun, and so rooftop solar withered.
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